I wish time could pass more quickly. I feel I’m suffocating under the forces of routine and tension, lots of family tension. I wish I could be away from it all. I have all this free time now that I’ve quit my job, but it’s worth nothing because I feel sluggish the time. I haven’t read more than two books and have painted nothing so far. Maybe if you’ve been living in a place for too long, long enough for you to have nowhere to run from things, your brain becomes dulled by the lack of change. I feel a bit like the desert around me, everything is the same wherever you look and nothing grows out of that.
UGH
I passed the IELTS with an 8.5 out of 9.0! I would have never fathomed this, ever. I was weakly hoping for an 8 but thinking I’d get a 7.0-6.5 or an even lower score on the Listening module since I zoned out for an unfortunate second. My individual scores were 8.5 on Listening (how!), Speaking and Writing, and an 8.0 on the Reading module (how!). In all, it is much higher than what Durham needed from me, and my studying paid off.
I’m sorry if I’m so lame and, if I post, I just post about my university process all the time, to those who read - I’ve been depressed for years and years and just now I found a dream to focus on. I still oscillate between being sad and anxious and any emotion in between, but I am mostly happy and excited but mostly impatient these days.
It’s weird being happy for so long, and it’s weird being happy when there are still things that sadden me but do not get in the way.
Tomorrow I should be taking the IELTS but guess who’s fantastic immune system decider to flunk right before said exam and make me have a stomach ache, aching muscles, dizziness, permanent coldness and an almost-panic attack in the middle of the streets?
I don’t know what to do!! I’m so afraid of failing my exam tomorrow. I woke up without feeling any anxiety, but it seems it’s this after all. How do I make this go away before the exam? I’ve taken these herbal drops that supposedly ease your anxiety, but I feel no difference from before I took them to after I did.
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I. I take the IELTS on Saturday and suddenly I feel like I’ve been learning English for a month and speak it with a thick sort of Eastern European accent. I know I’ll go nowhere if I’m not confident and hopeful, and I know my required minimum grade is very much a minimum, and I also realise my English is not very shabby at all, but still - I am so afraid of stuttering and forgetting all the really nice vocabulary I’ve learnt over the years as a result of being an avid reader and a jealous person.
II. Missing my cats each second of being away. Somehow the image of the-cat-who-considers-me-her-favourite-human and I, myself hugging her and talking to it between gross sobbing on the staircase came into my head and is now hopelessly stuck. I am not leaving for another five months so for now I may enjoy of my cats’ company and stop recurring to this image, but realising it will be that way and that I’ll eventually part with lots of pain and doubt as to whether they’ll love me the same way when I come back only to leave them again makes me want to do that gross sobbing in advance.
III. Finally began watching Dr. Who. All along I’d been afraid of the many doctors and many seasons (and of the fact that they kept accumulating and making my choices harder), but I started by the Eleventh Doctor just because I’ve seen so much about him lately, and I really like it so far (especially being a time-traveller myself). Not enough to partake in the fandom or make my love for it very loud, but just enough to grin at whatever Dr. Who-related reference I may ever find. Still, having watched some episodes doesn’t stop me from feeling intimidated by the amount of Doctors and seasons…
HELP MY BRAIN IS DRYING UP I NEED TO READ SOMETHING
tired tired tired tired tired tired tired tired tired
and tired.
TGIF is more like “Thank Gods It’s Saturday Night… oh wait I only have a day for resting, which is nothing, really. Thanks for nothing.”
Lately I have come across some of my favourite things in life that I’ve left neglected for so long. It feels so huge and so magical to remember and relive books or music that have brought so much joy into my life, even if it’s for a little while. I say a little while because this has been the least sabbatical year anyone could imagine.
I’ve been liking my job a little more each day (so long as I don’t have to make coffee), but it’s draining me out of… basic energy, so to speak. I come home and I fall asleep and I spend the remaining of the day doing absolutely nothing when there is so much in my mind. I have thought of quitting by the end of June, so I can enjoy two and a half months of “‘summer’ vacation”, like I would if I were at the other side of the planet, before going to college on said side of the planet. By then I’ll have the USD equivalent of $900 (or let’s say $700 because I like clothes a lot), and that’s still more than enough to allow me to indulge a little bit in uni (and I mean indulge in the sense of buying clothes and pretty things, not coffee - unfortunately that might become a necessity after all).
It makes me so incredibly sad to feel tired, dissatisfied, always hungry for more to do but too hungry to get up and do something. I feel ravenous for books. The only book I’ve read lately I didn’t remotely like. I give up on any kind of contemporary fiction. Seriously. If I read fiction it must either be fantasy or historical. The Virgin Suicides has been very dull. The author is obviously very well versed and skilful but the theme makes me feel nothing but boredom. I wish I could like it.
I also wish I could become a film enthusiast, but my attention span is far too low for that kind of commitment.
I had such a beautiful dream last night.
In the dream I remembered the occasion that I revisited, but it didn’t actually happen to me, my conscious/awake self, but right then I, or what felt like a fully conscious me, was in awe of being able to go back in time for a bit. I don’t remember how I got there - I was walking silently with my mum and sister, I think, in a narrow street, and I was waiting for my third grade me to go to class. I saw myself walking hand in hand with my best friend L. while my past self and my past class were walking in a line towards the classroom, which was a bit like a shop window for some reason, not part of a school, and it was a shade of toothpaste greenish blue like the colour found in the chairs we used in kindergarden, and we were wearing the blue and red aprons from kindergarden as well. I knew I’d come at some point. I was like a bit of a spectacle for my present self: at a given time and a given place that I remembered, a smaller me would make a stellar appearance, and I was almost fully sure I’d see my best friend and I fully enjoying ourselves, not with invisible, tugging heartstrings, pulling us countries apart.
I felt something huge and warm by seeing that friendship at its peak, by seeing us together at a sort-of present time. It was absolutely overwhelming. Obviously in a dream you do not realise you are dreaming, so I myself felt I was really time-travelling, witnessing the best period of my life with my own eyes.
In the classroom there was a heated discussion in which I was involved for some reason. I kept apologising for something I might have done in the way I do now - “sorry, sorry” with an intonation you’d find in Chilean Spanish, with rolled Rs. My fourth grade teacher was present. She looked her usual transvestite-like self (it’s the truth, or maybe as a fourth grader from her class my classmates and I have the right to demonise her) and wore bleached frizzy waves like she did when I was nine. It might not be obvious to anybody else, or at least anybody outside my class, but this was a mashup of years: first grade bowl cut, kindergarden aprons and kindergarden colours, primary school friends, evil fourth grade teacher, and third grade tension.
I knew there was something going on from outside the classroom, and if I crouched and tried hearing the discussion from the gap under the door I would still be noticed, as for some reason there was a low window placed on the door. Now that I remember, I was expecting myself to talk, I knew I would - no, I think I was expecting myself to talk about anything, not to be a remarkable character in the class. I just wanted to hear my voice, and as most people speak a little bit every day at least, I was expecting the time I’d talk without much of an idea as to when. Something made me confident that I’d be able to lower my body near the area anyway and hear my younger voice once again.
Out of nowhere, two or three unknown older women came up to hear the discussion, but they were standing up without any shame or guilt. I think it was for the fact that they weren’t time-travellers, and who knows whether one’s past self would recognise its future self and become distressed after all. One of them asked me about younger me. “You know that girl?”, she said, and I replied truthfully but as if my past self was just a random kid I met. It was funny; of course I know myself. I feel like if this actually happened, me and my past self would be laughing at whoever asked either of us if we knew each other. I think I was troublesome (hence her asking and tone in which she asked), but not out of loudness, but because of what came out of my mouth. I’ve always been the introvert type with intervals of being louder and quieter, but whether loud or quiet I have always been a bit pedantic and opinionated (might be my calcined Mercury).
I wanted to stay there so very badly. I hope I go back. I always whine about being a dreamer when I go to sleep. It’s nice when you’re awake because you can choose what to dream about (mostly), but when you’re asleep it’s up to whatever you’re hiding. It’s like you have little fairies and little goblins that only come out at night, and they can either perform a little magic or be up to no good and make you dread nighttime. I feel very distraught most of the times when I dream. I’ve floated in dreams and later gained the ability to simply fold my legs, give a leap and float wherever I want and land softly thereafter, and I’ve had consecutive dreams about a same person (guess who) that were a bit silly if you did not string them together, and strung together they told something that would happen later. I told myself what would happen to my friend when she didn’t tell me.
Dreams are weird. I love how there is an objective study of dreams, or rather the action of dreaming, but how the majority of the process of dreaming, the gathering of information etc. is still unveiled to our knowledge. I like how there’s always going to be subjectivity regarding dreams, and I like how you can’t compare them to the fullest because there’s always a part that you can’t explain through any media and it’s always part of you. What I don’t like is that you can’t actually go and visit your past self. I would rather forever be locked up in an attempt of lucid dreaming like I’ve had before than to not be able to go back for little bits, even if the experiences are blended into one dream so it’s not an objective, concrete reality you’re revisiting.
From today on I can travel by myself without having to get some silly transcripts, and I can have my own credit card which is nice! I didn’t think I’d be (glad to be) alive for my eighteenth. I hope this age is good (roll on, September!) and that I actually make friends. x
(I am not used to being productive on my birthday. I went to work. I don’t remember my class ever singing the Happy Birthday song to me while I was in school, probably because I never went to school on my birthday, like all friendless people in their right minds should do)
